


betting on losing dogs

by advantagetexas



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Watcher's Crown, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), daisy tonner listens to the archers and her cottage is very much proof of that, its a surprise, or well there is but there isnt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28181427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/advantagetexas/pseuds/advantagetexas
Summary: "For him, it was simple enough to wallow in the feeling of emptiness, to sit there with his thoughts and let them compound into a weight that stifled his breathing, that pressed against his chest as if trying to collapse him. He preferred it, sometimes, because it meant he could at least feel something. At least he was making a choice for himself. It was suffering, yes, but the suffering was his own. He could coddle it, mother it, mold it into something useful."(or; a clumsy love letter to tma by way of mitski, tea, and submitting to the mortifying ordeal of being known)
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 3
Kudos: 69





	betting on losing dogs

Martin Blackwood bets on losing dogs. It is a simple, indisputable fact. He always has, since before the archives, before the Institute, before he learned to brew a perfect cup of oolong tea without making a single sound. 

One of his earliest memories is of going to a fair with his parents. He couldn't have been more than 4 years old, and when he tries to remember his father's face everything becomes a little blurry around the edges, but he remembers every hair on the greying snout of that frail old racing hound. The one all alone in the corner of the paddock, tail tucked between its legs as it shook in fear of the crowd milling just outside the fence. It was underfed, nearly skin and bones; not even half as impressive as the other dogs zooming at top speed around the area to the amused wooing of onlookers. Martin was fascinated by it all the same. It obviously wasn't a fast dog. Or a well trained one. Or even a big one. But it was a  _ good _ dog. He could feel that in his very marrow, and to him, that was all that mattered. 

He was too young to understand the concept of odds, the exchanging of money between the fair barker and the nebulous man he always assumed was his father, but he understood well enough when that little green slip was handed carefully to him. He exchanged a look with the dog, glancing from it to the ticket with the certainty only a child can have. 

This was  _ his _ good dog, and it was going to win. 

In the end, he never found out. His parents had gotten into an argument and had taken him home before the start of the race, the car ride back from the fairgrounds silent and tense. Now, as a grown man, he knew that it was likely that that dog had placed dead last. It was the logical conclusion to be drawn. But when he thinks back, reminiscing on the feeling he'd had, so sure of his underdog's victory for those brief few moments, he allows himself an indulgent reality where it had won. 

He prefers those stories, the ones where the scrappy heroes overcome all their obstacles, where the odds are narrowly defied, where the good guys win. Where all the suffering means something to someone in the end. After all, what good is fighting against it, clawing yourself back from the brink again and again and again if it doesn't mean anything? And even if it is all pointless, if the suffering is for naught, if everything is a worthless endeavor meant to wring pain to feed an endless buffet of cosmic horrors, isn't it still better to suffer with someone than alone?

But that was, of course, for people that deserved it. Heroes, or at least people who did esteemable things. People like himself, who drifted through existence marking the lives of people around him with his incompetence, did not get that special treatment. For him, it was simple enough to wallow in the feeling of emptiness, to sit there with his thoughts and let them compound into a weight that stifled his breathing, that pressed against his chest as if trying to collapse him. He preferred it, sometimes, because it meant he could at least feel  _ something _ . At least he was making a choice for  _ himself _ . It was suffering, yes, but the suffering was his own. He could coddle it, mother it, mold it into something useful. He often considered whether or not it was the only part of him that was useful. If the only thing he was good for was his ability to give and give and give. His willingness to bleed himself dry for those that he felt were truly deserving. 

It was his own private hope that one day it would be worth something. That his efforts would finally bear fruit. That he would bet on his losing dog, stand there with pride in his heart, and win. 

"Martin?" 

"Sorry, just..." he couldn't even finish the sentence, eventually just shrugging as Jon looked at him with that concerned frown. 

"Right. Well, in any case, we're here." 

The cottage was nothing like he’d expected it to be. When he’d heard their destination included the phrases “Daisy’s” and “safehouse” it immediately conjured images of decrepit old hovels in the woods somewhere, a leaking old shack out in the deep fog of a moor. Something serviceable and bland, no descript features beyond their unpleasantness. But this? This place looked almost idyllic. 

A small stone cabin was set just before acres of rolling green paddocked hills dotted with little black and white cows. There were nicely painted lilac shutters and he swore he could see  _ checkered curtains _ in some of the windows. He half expected Mary Berry herself to appear in the doorway with a freshly baked cherry pie just to really solidify the fact that he was dreaming and none of this was real. Any moment now he’d wake up in The Lonely, surrounded by those acres of rolling fog. He could even see it now, creeping into the edges of his vision, slowly filling the inside of the car as he felt his heart sink. 

And then the fog is whisked away, replaced by fresh Highlands air as Jon swings his door open and steps out. He stretches his arms up, sore from the long drive, and the oversized sweater he was wearing bunches up around his shoulders. Wait a second. 

“Jon, is that my sweater?” Martin asks, laughing as he too gets out of the car, closing the door before giving him a teasing smile. 

“Yes and no,” he replies, grabbing their bags from the backseat. “It  _ was  _ yours. But you left it in the archives after Jane Prentiss attacked and you never came back for it, so eventually I...kept it.” 

“You stole it.” He takes his duffel from Jon, who refuses to look straight at him, instead choosing to glare at the sky just beyond his left shoulder. 

“In my defense, I  _ had  _ just woken up from a 6 month coma to find that I owned a single shirt. That I was technically borrowing. From  _ Melanie _ of all people.” 

Martin shook his head and chuckled as he tried to imagine Jon shopping for anything, let alone new clothes. They’re lucky he didn’t regress back into the dreaded “waistcoat phase” that Tim used to tease about from back when he and Jon worked in Research together. But no, it seems that his dear Archivist got out of his comfort zone and leaned into the cozy zone. 

He couldn’t help but give an extra glace as Jon shouldered his way through the door after fighting with the key for a few moments. He had his sleeves pushed up to his forearms, the cuffs of his grey dress shirt holding them in place. The sweater itself was way too big for him, the purple argyle seemed to billow around with every movement, one shoulder almost falling off before Jon fixes it with a prim huff. 

Martin manages to tear his eyes away, instead looking around the cabin. The main room is small, the open kitchen to his left. As yet another surprise, care of Daisy, there’s even little decorative dish towels still hanging over the oven handle. They’re a little dusty, but still. Daisy Tonner and decorative dish towels were not something he ever thought he’d have to put in the same sentence. Unless the sentence was something like “Daisy just threatened to kill me with a dish towel.”

At the center of the room is a couch that they set their bags on, facing a stone fireplace with wood still piled neatly on the hearth beside it. The entire place smells of pine and dust, Jon punctuating that thought with a sneeze as he opens the door in the back and a puff of dust rushes out. 

“Bless you,” Martin offers, as Jon sneezes again. He makes a mental note to get started on cleaning up as soon as possible. Jon starts to stutter a thank you before abruptly shutting the door and standing there blankly. “Everything alright?” 

“Just fine. Are you hungry, Martin?” 

“Not all that much.” His stomach grumbles loudly at even the thought of food, and Jon nods knowingly to himself. 

“Would you like to head to the village, then? If we leave soon we can be back before sunset.” 

And so they go, arguing over what to listen to on the radio. Jon wants to listen to The Archers and refuses to explain why. Martin chalks it up to him being swept up in the highlands atmosphere and bargains him down to listening to the local indie station as a compromise. As the woman singing starts to croon about her heart being a washing machine, they set off down the road, gravel crunching under the tires. 

They don’t speak on the drive, but the silence isn’t the oppressive thing that Martin’s used to, it wraps around him like a warm blanket. It’s comfortable, safe. Jon taps his fingers against the steering wheel to several songs as if he knows them and Martin watches the road and focuses on not getting car sick. 

The village is small, and so is their market, barely bigger than a corner store. The woman behind the counter is all too happy to chitchat with him as Jon picks out their groceries and Martin is all too happy to have a  _ normal  _ conversation for once. Yes, they’re from out of town. Yes, they’re on vacation. On a break from work, yes. At that, the woman looks at him and then Jon, who is staring almost  _ through _ the back of a box of tea as if searching for a hidden statement in the brewing instructions, and smiles placidly. 

They check out their groceries, Martin covering the cost. He’s actually managed to squirrel away a considerable amount of cash. Not much use for money when you’re focused on getting rid of all your earthly tethers, after all; and he’d eventually gotten Peter to agree to pay him in cash. 

The drive back to the cabin is equally quiet, save for the sound of the radio. That same woman from the washing machine song is back, but Martin barely hears her over the sight of Jon smiling as he drives, humming the tune of the song to himself. 

“Be with me,” she croons, voice staticy over the bad speakers, but Jon joins in, low voice creating a beautiful harmony. “Alone with me, alone with me, alone.” 

He sings every word as if he feels it, as if he relates so heavily to the words themselves he may as well have written them. That pierces something in Martin’s heart that he’d been tactfully avoiding, skewering him with guilt as Jon continues to harmonize with the radio. 

It wasn’t so long ago that Jon was practically begging him to run away with him, eyes wild and hair a mess as he ranted about how they could “quit” the Institute. They could leave, just the two of them, and hide from Elias and The Eye and every other blasted thing in the world for the rest of their (presumably short) lives. And he’d said no. 

He’d pushed him away and fallen deeper and deeper into the clutches of The Lonely and that bastard Peter Lukas. And for what? To “save” him? To counter whatever vague threat Elias posed from the center of his panopticon tower? To prevent Jon from falling into some non-specific harm? How stupid he’d been. Or, well, not stupid, but indulgent. With the ability to say “I’m doing this for you” also came the shield from rejection, from ever really knowing if his feelings would be returned. It felt more comfortable to sit in the silence and grieve “what would never be” than to find out what  _ could _ be.

“If I could see you, once more to see you,” Jon trails off as the song ends, and the car goes quiet again as they both become lost in their own thoughts until they finally arrive back at the cabin. The sun is setting now, sky filled with a mosaic of orange and yellow, streaked through with fluffy clouds as they bring in the groceries. By the time they’re all neatly put away and the kettle heated up for a celebratory cup of tea, it’s almost dark outside. 

He spoons sugar into two mugs (only a single spoon for himself, but three for Jon, the way he prefers it) and lets them sit for a moment while the green tea steeps, busying himself with cleaning up the kitchen counter. 

His mental timer rings and he stirs the cups, taking a sip from his own to ensure proper steeping before taking both cups over to the sofa. Jon doesn’t look over as he sits down beside him, jostling the book he’s studying slightly. 

“Tea?” Martin asks, holding out the proper mug in his direction. It’s plain black, with little white cat prints in a stripe around the center. Jon doesn’t reply, annotating something next to one of the stanzas. “Jon?” A little louder, and this time he looks up, flustered wide eyes melting into a soft smile as he shuts his book and puts it to the side, holding the mug in both hands as if to warm them. 

“Thank you,” he says, and then hums contentedly after taking a sip. “You always did make the perfect cup of tea.” 

“Not like you ever told me that,” Martin jokes, “Had to figure out how many sugars you took purely on instinct.” 

Jon frowns at that, resting the cup in his lap as he looks away, and for a moment Martin thinks he’s ruined it somehow, that because he’s brought it up Jon’s going to morph back into the boss that used to critique his work so mercilessly. But instead, Jon just sighs and takes his glasses off, cleaning them with the soft hem of his sweater. 

“I should have been more grateful,” he finally says, and now it’s Martin’s turn to frown. “I took so much of what you did, how you treated me, for granted,” he continues. “I don’t think I quite realized how much better you made my life until you weren’t in it.” He takes another sip of tea as Martin stalls for a response, for some way to twist the situation to make it his own fault. “I’ll be better about that in the future.” 

“I...in the future?” It’s all Martin can say, still somewhat wordless in his disbelief. 

“Of course,” Jon replies easily, smiling at him. He must see something concerning in Martin’s expression because he reaches out, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “To be quite honest, I don’t see a future for myself that you’re not in, so yes, in the future.” 

There’s a pause as Martin tries to parse all of that, and Jon removes his hand, shifts into nervously sipping his drink every five seconds until the mug is empty. He clears his throat and Martin finally snaps back into reality with a jolt. 

“Sorry, just...”

“Tired?” Jon offers, and Martin nods. 

“And you?” 

“I think I’ll stay up a while longer. I’ll give you a shout if anything goes wrong.” He smiles again, and Martin returns it, taking both empty mugs with him back to the kitchen and rinsing them in the sink. When he looks back at the couch from the bedroom door, Jon is already back into being enthralled by his book, scratching little commentaries in the margins with one of the specially ordered pens he’d insisted they salvage from his abysmal flat before they fled London. 

He looks practically...normal. Like he hasn’t been spat upon by countless eldritch horrors that feed on his terror. Martin could imagine seeing him behind the counter of any one of those upscale secondhand bookshops in Chelsea, sighing disinterestedly as he wrapped a customer’s purchase in brown butcher’s paper and twine. 

The door opens and his gaze is drawn away, to the bed under the high window. It’s a single queen sized bed, with a thick lilac quilt patterned with embroidered flowers all over it. He wasn’t very good with flowers, but he felt safe in assuming they were daisies. Their bags were pressed neatly against the far wall where Jon had insisted on moving them earlier. Martin gets halfway through changing into his pajamas before he sighs, finally realizing what game was being played. He puts on an old t-shirt and waits a few minutes before going back out into the living room. 

Jon is still on the couch, but now he’s lying down, hands resting on his stomach and his book propped open to rest over his eyes. His breathing is even and calm as Martin crouches down next to the couch. He looks at the cover of the book, smiling when he reads the words “The Compiled Works of John Keats” in bright red font. 

“Jon,” he whispers, and the archivist jolts awake, sitting up and looking around blearily. 

“W’happened?”

“Come to bed, you silly man,” Martin entreats, and Jon huffs guiltily. 

“I’m perfectly fine taking the couch. I didn’t want to overstep your boundaries by suggesting-” 

“You’re not overstepping anything. I’m asking you.” Jon looks like he’s going to argue, and then eventually relents. Martin stands up and offers him a hand, leading him to the door, giving him a few moments to change by himself before knocking and coming in. 

Jon had changed into a pair of flannel pajama pants, but had kept Martin’s “borrowed” sweater on. Without the help of the dress shirt he’d worn it with, it was very obvious just how much smaller he was than it. The sleeves fell down to the tips of his fingers as he pulled the covers back, the neckline sloping in the center to expose a stretch of very visible collarbone. Martin tactfully avoided looking, instead simply climbing into bed beside him, the dark reducing the room to just the two of them. 

After so much, here they were, close enough to sense each others’ breathing, and yet they still seemed so far apart. They would continue on like this forever, each orbiting the other, but never truly breaking that barrier. That was how it had always been, and it made Martin’s heart ache to think that was all it might ever be. 

“This may be a strange request,” came Jon’s voice from beside him in the dark, and he turned to it until they were face to face. 

“Aren’t they all?” Martin replied, and even without sight, he could practically  _ feel _ Jon frown. “Kidding. I’m kidding.” There was more silence, the anxiety now building in his chest. 

“Sorry,” he blurts out in apology at the same time Jon says “Can I hold your hand?” 

“Sorry?” he asks, this time to acknowledge that he simply must have heard that wrong, though the leap of his heart believes otherwise. 

“Can I hold your hand?” Jon repeats, as one would repeat a shopping list to an especially forgetful spouse. 

“Oh. I...of course you can. Of course.” 

He reaches out his arm, finding Jon’s bony hand that was somehow cold despite the thick quilt and temperate weather. He laces their fingers together, the back of his hand resting on the sheets. Martin says nothing else, just lays there until eventually he drifts off into a dreamless, empty sleep. 

\------------------------------------------------------

It’s been four days, and their routine hasn’t changed. They wake up in the same bed, and they don’t talk about it. Martin goes on his walks and Jon reads his book, and they don’t talk about it. They sit down for dinner and smile at each other, and they don’t talk about it. 

They talk about all sorts of other things, but they don’t talk about  _ it _ . Don’t have the final conversation that would resolve all the confusion piling itself up like a fire hazard in Martin’s head. And he’s goddamn sick of it. He pulls the mugs down from the cabinet, setting them beside the heating kettle as he searches for the box of green tea bags he’d sworn he just had. 

“Jon? Where did you leave the teabags?” he calls back into the living room where Jon is looking over a box of statements that Basira had shipped him. He watches over his shoulder as he separates them into piles, presumably by their quality, or perhaps what entity they belong to. 

“Why would I know where they are? I don’t make the tea,” he replies, and then realizing his own dismissive tone continues, “But maybe we’re just out of them. There’s an extra box I picked up at the store in the left drawer.” 

“Oh, alright,” Martin replies, dutifully opening the drawer and inspecting the box. It’s colored a dull grey, as the type proudly proclaims it to be “100% pure oolong” as the room begins to spin around him. 

“Have you found it?” Jon asks. He’s quiet, as if he’s miles away as Martin continues to stare at the box. Why did it have to be oolong of all kinds? Did Jon buy it on purpose? Why? To taunt him? To remind him of all the failures he’d very much rather forget? “Martin?” His hand is curled around the edge of the counter now, to prevent his knees from buckling and sending him straight to the ground. A piece of paper skids across the counter and the box is pulled from his grasp gently, set to the side.

Jon continues to talk, puts his hands on Martin’s shoulders as he tries to rouse him out of his panic attack, but it’s useless now. He can’t hear a single word over his desire to be alone, to deal with his own pathetic nature by himself, god forbid he should burden someone else with his problems. Especially not Jon. He already suffered so much, there was no good reason that he should also have to deal with Martin’s petty little problems. Everything would be so much better for him if Martin simply disappeared. 

The fog was beginning to creep in now, he could see it. It was rolling across the floor behind Jon, already beginning to pull him away as he stared into its blank nothingness. Jon turns his head to look behind him and physically shudders, eyes wide with barely contained panic as he turns back around. He grabs at the controls for the stove, turning the burners off and the oven on, throwing the door open quickly. He turns back and practically throws himself at Martin, arms wrapping tightly around his back as the taller man’s knees finally give, collapsing both of them into a heap against the corner of the kitchen cabinets. 

“Jon?” Martin finally manages to stutter, confusion breaking through his own self pity as the scrawny archivist holds him tightly to him, as if protecting him bodily from some invisible enemy. 

“It will  _ not  _ take you this time. Not again. Not  _ ever _ again,” Jon whispers, more to himself than in response, and Martin finally crumbles. He wraps his arms around Jon’s middle, tears welling up as he presses his face into the other’s chest. They stay there for a long while, Jon alternating between holding him as if he’s going to be dragged off, and gently smoothing his hair, giving him time to compose himself. When he finally leans back and looks up, the cabin is free of fog once again, the fire crackling in the hearth, the oven still open and leaking heat into the room. It’s only then, his sense returned to him, that he questions the oven. 

“Why’s the oven open?” he asks, and Jon shifts, pulling his signature “I don’t like the answer to this question, so I will simply ignore it” schtick until it becomes clear that Martin is willing to wait forever until he explains. He mumbles something that Martin doesn’t catch, but sounds a lot like “worked for camping.” 

“What?” 

“I said it drives the fog away. Heat does. It’s a trick they teach for camping.” 

“I can’t imagine you ever going camping,” Martin jokes, because it’s easier to avoid his feelings than to dive into them. He simply files the intense burst of love he feels as something to be dealt with later. 

“Georgie dragged me out once when we were in uni.” He shudders dramatically for effect. “Never could get over the knowledge that bugs were just  _ around _ . Quite unpleasant.” He finally stands up, offering a balancing hand to Martin as he uses the other to reset the oven and close its door. Then his attention is drawn to the box of tea and he scowls at it, grabbing it and making a motion to throw it, still sealed, into the trash. 

“Wait,” Martin says, catching him by the wrist. “That’s perfectly good tea.” 

“And it’s heavily upset you in some way, so into the trash it goes,” Jon says, like it’s that simple. Something has upset Martin, and now it must be dealt with. Plain as day. 

“Well I’d like to keep it. It’s perfectly good tea, and you bought it for me.” 

“Absolutely not. It made you cry, so it-” 

“Do you even know  _ why _ it upset me?” Martin asks, and Jon pauses, looking down and fiddling with the plastic wrap on the tea box. 

“No,” he finally admits, testily. “I suppose I could  **know** it if I wanted to, but I won’t.” 

“So you didn’t know when you picked it out?” 

“No, I should think not. I actually thought I had done a good job of choosing. You always used to complain about how the break room only stocked breakfast tea and that horrible off-brand cinnamon chai, so I assumed you would prefer something else.” 

“I...oh, you’re too sweet to me, darling,” Martin smiles, and Jon seems to melt, smiling back up at him with wide, sparkling eyes. 

“Say that again,” he entreats, voice barely above a whisper, “Please.” 

“Darling?” he repeats, and Jon nods, closing his eyes momentarily and taking a deep, contented breath. 

“Oh, that’s  _ lovely _ . If I could be any more enamoured with you than I already am, that would certainly have done it.” 

Martin’s brain immediately shuts down, his face going blank as he processes what just happened. The words that were just spoken as if they were already known despite, to him, only being a figment of his wildest dreams. Jon is interested in him.  _ Enamoured,  _ even. He seems to notice Martin’s confusion, chuckling a little to himself. 

“Did you not know? Martin, I absolutely _adore_ you.” He puts a comforting hand on either side of the taller man’s face, looking him right in the eye as he speaks. “If I hadn’t found you, well, I don’t know what I would’ve done. Ceased to exist, probably. Dissolved from existence like an alka seltzer tablet.” 

“You...you care for me?” 

“Of course I do.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Of course I’m sure,” Jon replies with a chuckle, drawing just a bit closer. “Martin, I love you.” His breath hitches, and he makes a split second decision, closing the gap between him and Jon and pressing their lips together. It’s clumsy and out of practice, but Jon doesn’t pull away, doesn’t immediately tell him that this was a mistake; if anything he seems to melt in Martin’s arms. 

“I love you too,” Martin responds once he regains his composure. He puts his hand on the counter to steady himself and finds himself grasping onto the statement Jon had been holding when he’d had his panic attack. He looks over at it, and immediately realizes that the style is wrong. It looks as if it was written by someone who had only ever  _ seen  _ statements, never formatted one themselves. The margins were all wrong, the font had no serifs, the name was a size too big. 

He looked at the forgery more closely, the part of his brain that had been analytical, that had dealt with peril on a daily basis for years pushing his emotions to the back of his head. Jon seems to go through the same process, warmth dropping from his eyes as he looks over Martin’s arm to read the text. 

“ **And weaves and burns and hunts and rips and-** ” Jon starts, that horrible “spooky archivist” echo to his voice, and Martin tears the paper from his grasp, shoving the corner into the relit kettle burner. 

“What are you doing?!” Jon hisses, trying to put the fire out, but he keeps him and his protests away until the paper is ash down to a single corner and he finally trusts himself to speak. 

“That was some spooky ritual bullshit. I’m sure of it.” 

“What?”

“Your voice started to do, y’know, the  **thing** .” 

“I don’t know the  **thing** ,” Jon huffs, crossing his arms over his chest, before rolling his eyes and capitulating. “But alright. What’s the next step, then?” 

“I need to read all those statements before you even think about touching them again,” Martin says, pointing at the covered coffee table across the room. “And anything else we get from the archives in the future, too. Probably Elias trying to trick you into some ritual nonsense.” 

“You think he’s trying to complete The Watcher’s Crown,” Jon confirms with a tilt of his head. Martin nods and sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Alright, let’s review the statements then.” 

“Right. Review statements.” 

“Is something wrong?” Jon frowns and Martin decides that, yes actually, he was finally going to do something for himself without waiting for things to work  _ themselves _ out. 

“When we’re done with that can we talk about...us?” 

“Talk about us?” 

“Yeah, like, have ‘the conversation’.”

“Of course we can.” Jon smiled, that previous warmth returning to his gaze as he looked at Martin the way a fastidious tailor would look at a perfect seam. He looked at him as if he was something worth having. No, not worth having. Like he was actively sought after. As if he was valuable not for what he could do, but simply for what he was. 

Martin Blackwood used to bet on losing dogs, but he was beginning to think that perhaps his luck was turning around. Jonathan Sims, he thought, was not a losing dog. And now, neither was he. 

**Author's Note:**

> the archivist listens to mitski and you can rip that headcanon from my cold dead hands. you're telling me this man /doesn't/ listen to 'goodbye, my danish sweetheart' and yearn his scrawny little heart out? that he /doesn't/ hear 'nobody' on his spotify discover while on the tube to work and immediately think of martin? absolutely not. this is unbetaed, lightly edited, and dear christ im from nyc so writing accurate britishisms spins my goddamn head, but i hope you enjoyed it anyway


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